watched mitt romney over the years, and he has steadily improved, and, you know, people like stuart stevens and beth myers took a lot of heat over the last couple months about the campaign, but those -- i have worked with stuart before in many campaigns, and he's a debate preparation fanatic, and they understood that this would be an opportunity to shift the gears, to reframe the race, and one guy showed up and one guy prepared, and it showed. it really did. you know, a lot of people were saying it's the best since reagan. reagan had some natural gifts and was an affable guy. i think in terms of preparation, this may be one of the best presidential debate performances ever. >> i agree. in a totally amoral, apolitical sense, i agree with you. steve, what do you think happened to obama? >> i think he prepared and showed up for a news conference, not a debate. he answered the questions -- >> but there weren't any questions. lehrer didn't see it as his role -- >> we can talk about lehrer separately. i think what they were trying to accomplish is their view was the mitt romney campaign wasn't go